


==> Be Vriska

by Unda



Series: It's the end of the world as we know it [23]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, F/M, Humans Are Terrifying, Vriska needs to get her goddamn love life in order
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2019-03-11 01:40:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13514088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unda/pseuds/Unda
Summary: Comprises free will section ==> Be Vriska in chapter 34 of MC Esher





	==> Be Vriska

==> Be Vriska

Naturally, you are. Anyone else would be frankly lucky to be you. Karkat has assigned you a team for his little project and it’s very interesting indeed to see how he’s broken people up, how he’s trying to forge cute little friendships between the people on the teams so that his goals can pan out. Your apprentice leader is coming along well. 

You figure you’ll round up Terezi first. You hop over to her table and whip out the paper in front of her face. 

“Feast your nose on that Pyrope, we’re splitting up in teams today and you’re on mine.” you say smugly. 

“A good team but John’s dad is on your list, what’s with that?” Terezi asks with little sniffs at the page. 

“Oh, well, the numbers broke down that way and if anyone can handle an adult it’s me.” you tell her and she grins lopsidedly. 

“Heh, did Karkat tell you that?” Terezi asks with a lopsided grin, very much insinuating that  _ Karkat  _ had manipulated you. 

“Shut up, go get Feferi for me.” you say and drub her on the head with the rolled up list. You catch sight of Kanaya and rush across the room to her. 

“You’re on my list.” you purr at her, just because you know it irks her when you do. 

“Oh. Joy.” Kanaya says blandly, giving you no reaction to speak of. 

“Also Terezi, Feferi and John’s dad.” you add.

“I do hope that will not be awkward.” Kanaya says, moving past you and heading towards where Feferi is standing. Terezi is currently walking away from her towards John’s dad. 

“Why would it be awkward?” you ask with a frown. 

“Working in a group with your soulmate’s father.” she says breezily. You slap a hand over the mark on your arm which is pointless because your skin is covered right now. 

“How did you-” you start to say but Kanaya just smiles, her slick jade tinted lipstick pristine as always. 

“My soulmate is a seer of light, you think I would not know?” Kanaya chuckles. 

“Still a fussyfangs I see.” you grumble. 

“If I was fussing you would know about it.” she counters. 

“I do know about it, that’s why I said it.” you shoot back. 

“Hi.” Feferi chirps at the two of you as you approach, putting an end to your squabble. Terezi returns with Mr Egbert in tow. Looking at him it seems impossible to believe the things that you’ve heard, he looks so inoffensive and suburban. You are starting to suspect that Karkat is having you babysat by a human adult and your ex moirail. 

“Right,” you say and then consider your position and climb on a nearby chair so you’re the tallest, “we’re going to do exactly what I say today. Got it?” 

“So what is that, exactly?” Kanaya asks. 

You open your mouth to answer but then you catch a flash of white-blonde hair across the room held back by a prissy little purple hairband. Rose. She’s off with another team today, she’ll be bombarded by the light and the possible future. You can’t have her sneaking off from her team and getting trashed. She’s got to make progress and evidently you have to make her. 

“Hold that thought!” you order your team and leap from your chair, over Kanaya and onto another chair. You bounce from that to the floor, just missing Porrim who was walking by to your sister. You duck and weave past people until you’re face to face with Rose. 

She looks at you like she knows what you’re going to say already, which if she isn’t tuning out her light powers right now she probably does. 

“Rose, remember: focus.” you instruct her. The two of you had made some progress before Karkat interrupted you before but you don’t know how she’s doing today or if she’s even trying right now. 

“Actually,” Rose says like she thinks she’s better than you, “today is a day where I need to see. So as much as I would love to put your highly nonspecific advice into action I shall abstain.” 

“What’s so important about today, huh? Where are you even going?” you challenge her and Rose finally stops walking to face you. She smiles, her black lipstick smile right in your face and rubbing all your nerves wrong. 

“Oh, it’s not me who’s going somewhere special. We’re just off to Latula’s planet but you… I know where you’re going.” Rose says purrs and you deeply want to punch her in the face. So bad, you can hear yourself growling at her and the smallest mercy is that she can’t hear you. 

“Really? And where’s that?” you snap.

“Wherever I tell you to.” Rose says with faux sweetness dripping right off of her. Her eyes spark with challenge and she flashes you another smile and sweeps off, her seer robes fluttering behind her. 

You have enough self control to not actually strangle her but not so much to not scream and storm back to your team. 

“So, what’re we doing?” Terezi asks. 

You want to tell her that you’ll be doing what you originally had in mind but Rose can see the future and you’re not so stupid as to doom everyone including yourself just out of spite. Besides, it’ll be worse if you try to resist and end up doing what she says anyway, better to act like you just didn’t have a problem with it in the first place. 

“We have a very important mission, unfortunately Rose is delaying on giving us the vital information that we need. When we have all the intelligence that we need I can direct us further.” you explain. 

“So we are waiting for Rose to tell you what to do.” Kanaya concludes and you consider putting your fist through her face. Instead of doing that you pull your phone out and begin to message Rose. 

[arachnidsGrip began trolling tentacleTherapist]

AG: Alright smartass, if you're done acting superior are you going to tell me what your oh so important visi8n is?

TT: Glad to see you’ve accepted that you’re doing what I say. 

AG: Don't push your luck Lalonde, we 8oth know which one of us fares 8etter there.

TT: Indeed. Well, your mission regardless of whether or not you accept it is to collect quest beds from players’ planets. Not all of them of course, I just need one per aspect. Though I would wager that you could leave time as all our time players are already god tier. 

AG: What? Why do you need that?

AG: Would they even still work on the ship and whose do you want me to take 8ecause we have multiples of them.

TT: Obviously they still work when removed, Dave is proof of that. 

AG: Yeah, they work when removed from their starting planet 8ut Dave's 8ed was still on A PLANET not on a spaceship. Duuuuuuuuh.

TT: A valid point, but they will work on the ship. I have seen it. 

AG: Oh shit, that means someone dies on the ship, you've seen it. Who is it?

TT: You don’t need to know that. 

AG: Augh, Rose!!!!!!!! We talked a8out this. You can't just ar8itr8 on things like this 8y yourself, is it vital that I don't know? 8ecause otherwise you're acting like I'm some toy of yours that you're using to act out a story and I won't do that!

TT: I cannot accept any possibility that you will mess this up, just doing what I say is simpler. 

AG: Gee, Rose I thought you were smart. You're gonna 8et that I'll 8e more likely to help you when you're a 8itch?

TT: …

AG: I can w8 aaaaaaaall day, can you? 

TT: The first quest bed I need you to pick up is void. 

You look up from your phone as the thought bubbles up in your head like something drowning in tar. If it was you, you would want to get the most important one out of the way first to be sure it’d get done. And that means…

AG: Roxy's going to die?

TT: In the best possible scenario that I am trying to ensure will come to pass it will be only temporary. 

You imagine your sister dead, imagine having to see it when no one else can yet, to not be able to react. Because if you react they ask you what’s wrong and you can’t say or else you’ll change things, better to have people just think that you’re a cold hearted bitch, right? You can’t imagine looking Aranea in the eyes and knowing what’s to come and being unable to tell her to change to avoid it. You don’t even like your sister all that much, you haven’t even known her all that long and still the thought makes your stomach churn. Whereas Rose has known her sister for her whole life and you know how humans are with their pack bonding.

Rose deserves to be taken down almost all the pegs there are, she needs someone to prove her wrong and grind her down because fuck knows she’s not going to get the humbleness she needs on her own. This is all true, but on this topic you won’t do that. Rose knows her sister will die and she needs you to make sure it’s a fleeting death.

And of course there’s that urge, the desire to prove to her that though you want to wreck her, break her facade, make her admit that she was wrong that you can be trusted too. That you can bite, fight, claw and kick but you won’t slit her throat in her sleep, you won’t kick her when she’s down, you know when to stop. What’s the point of being better than a dead person anyway? You want to be better than her and you want her to want to be better than you, it should be a dance and spiral towards greatness for you both. 

You’ve not talked to her about it. About feeling that way for her, it’s not seemed like the time and this isn’t it for sure. But she’s not stupid, which means she might be watching you. This could be a test, perhaps. A chance to prove yourself. 

AG: I'll get the 8ed.

You put your phone away and turn back to the group. 

“We have a very important mission. We need to go to the planets of each aspect, just one each, and retrieve the quests beds and bring them back here.” you tell them. 

“I suppose given what I’ve heard of their regenerative powers it makes sense to keep them on a ship that can move to someone’s location almost instantly. Like any other emergency medical device I suppose.” Mr Egbert nods solemnly. 

“Rose said we should do this?” Kanaya asks with a suspicious squint, possibly thinking along the lines you did. That Rose wouldn’t ask this if it wouldn’t be immediately needed, which means someone will die. You feel a wigglerlike surge of spite towards your ex moirail, Rose told you but not her! But… well, you know that kind of pride tends to come right before a bad turn in luck and you landing right on your face. So you just manage to squash the urge to gloat and rub it in her prissy face. 

“She’s giving me intel, yeah. The first planet we’re hitting up is Roxy’s, everyone ready?” you ask and march out, letting the others follow you. 

AG: We're on the way to LOVAA now, do you have the location or is this a treasure hunt?

TT: I’ll send them to you.

TT: And thank you for this, I know that I could have perhaps asked more nicely. 

AG: I wasn't crying into my sopor pillow or anything, I'm not a wiggler, Rose. Geeeeeeeez.

TT: Of course, my mistake. I will send you the coordinates now. 

TT: Or should I say the…

TT: coordin8s

AG: OHHHHHHHH MY GOD.

You’re just putting your phone away because you shouldn’t fly and text, that’s it not because you can’t handle that conversation. Noooooooo.

You valiantly lead the way to Roxy’s planet, following the rough coordinates that Rose sent you. Roxy’s quest bed is sat in the middle of a picturesque forest and atop a tall hill. It looks peaceful. You remember standing on your own quest bed, facing down your own demise. 

You kind of wish you didn’t remember it. 

“So we have to remove it?” Terezi asks. 

“Yes, it needs to go back to the ship.” you tell her with a nod.

Feferi tries to put it in her sylladex as is but she just gets a rude buzz of an error message. The thing is attached to the ground and so she can’t pick it up without picking up the whole planet and no one can fit a whole planet in their sylladex obviously. 

“We’ll just have to separate it!” you declare. 

“I am pretty sure that my chainsaw cannot cut through stone without breaking. Flesh, certainly, but not stone.” Kanaya muses. 

“Well, lucky for you that I’m here!” you grin and throw your dice in the air. They land and your weapon flies into your hand. 

A sword. 

You can’t cut through a stone quest bed with a sword.

Or can you?

You rush over to the bed, draw your arm back, and swing!

Pain reverberates up your arm, you cannot cut through a stone quest bed with a sword.

“Could I try?” a kindly voice asks. You whirl around to see John’s dad looking down at you with a soft smile, his hand is out expectantly. 

“What’s your strife specibus anyway? Surely not dicekind?” you ask. 

“Not that, no.” he says with a shake of his head. 

“Swordkind?” Terezi asks, always keen to find more people with the same kind as hers even though it’s hardly  _ rare _ .

“Not that either, but I’ll be fine.” he assures you and you skeptically hand him the sword. Maybe he has an empty slot or he’s just going to try to use it without proficiency but you doubt that’d work at all. This is your specibus and you can’t do it, adult or not he won’t be able to manage that if he’s not dicekind or swordkind.

“I’ve never used a sword before, or anything with a blade. Careful now, I wouldn’t want an accident.” he says lightly and shoos you away. 

“But how can you-” you begin. 

You want to ask again what he specibus is. You want to ask how the thinks he can be better than you who is trained for this and has the right specibus for that weapon. You get cut off when Mr Egbert curiously shifts the hilt of the sword in his palm and then slashes out at the quest bed. It bounces from the floor for a moment until Mr Egbert catches it into his sylladex. 

Mr Egbert twirls the sword around in his hands and tosses it up so it becomes dice again. He catches them, throws them again. They fall and become a lamp, another throw and now it’s a fancy santa figurine. He’s able to wield all of them, and you only can because of your dicekind. But that cut was not only more than you could do but it was not the work of someone who couldn’t use a sword. 

“What… what is your specibus?” you asks again as he drops the dice in your hand with a smile. 

“Jokerkind.” he tells you genially. 

You, Terezi and Kanaya all take a slight step back with a subvocal trill of warning between you. Feferi is too high blooded to be scared of that but she is tense where she was not before. Subjugglators have jokerkind, them and those training to be them. You know that Gamzee and Kurloz got jokerkind but no one ever found out how they did it. There were no subjugglators on Earth, so they weren’t in training. The thing is you got your dicekind by having dice and selecting them as your weapon, Kanaya did the same for her chainsaw. You can’t do that with jokerkind, that strife specibus makes everything a weapon, you can’t put everything in there so how people get it is a mystery. The kind of mystery that until now was contained to tents filled with blood and laughter. 

You’ve seen a subjugglator fight using jokerkind. One snapped on a city street on Alternia when you were little. You watched him grab a guy’s baseball bat and beat him to death with it, then snap off his arm and beat another guy with that. You’re not too proud to admit that they’re terrifying, the world is a weapon to them. Gamzee and Kurloz don’t scare you, not really, they’re not subjugglators they just dress the part and bleed right. But you look into the face of this human man and get why Mindfang said he was impressive. You believe that he put a cigarette out in a man’s eye to escape, he’s subjugglator crazy with human specific madness to boot. Thank fuck he’s on your side. 

But is he?

This man is the father of your soulmate. You are either very lucky, or very unlucky. You’re not sure yet. 

AG: John's father is a fucking su8juggl8or and you didn't tell me!!!!!!!!

TT: I’m sorry what?

AG: A subjugglator!

TT: I am somehow no more enlightened than before, I don’t know what that is. 

AG: It’s- look I don't want to take my eyes off of him for long 8ut they're really fucking dangerous ok?! Are you trying to get us killed?

TT: I assure you that Mr. Egbert is a perfectly nice man, he’d never harm any of you. You certainly don’t need to be afraid of him, I’ve never seen anything to suggest that he’s dangerous to us at all. What makes you so suddenly worried?

AG: He uses jokerkind!

TT: Oh, that’s pretty rare. Actually, I believe that might have been one of the things that once convinced John that his father was a secret street performer when he was younger. 

AG: There are more humans with jokerkind?! How many?

TT: I don’t know. If you want a breakdown Hal probably has stats on what it was somewhere in all of his data. I really don’t understand your sudden obsession with this. Anyway, I’m sending you the next coordinates, they’re on Nepeta’s planet.

You look back up at Mr. Egbert who is just watching you with a bland smile. Oh God. 

“She’s just… sending me the next location. It’s on Nepeta’s planet.” you say and swallow thickly. Feferi edges closer to you. 

“Oh good, perhaps we should set off now and adjust our course when we get more information.” he says. 

“Good idea!” you say quickly. 

“Yes, Sir.” Kanaya says at the same time. 

“Absolutely.” Terezi nods. 

“Sounds good.” Feferi agrees. 

The smiling Mr. Egbert looks at all of you and you think, for the first time, that he looks… mirthful. 

You all follow him off of Roxy’s planet. 

Humans are dangerous, you all know that humans are dangerous. All trolls living on Earth know that they seem harmless but underneath they are crazy and filled with sharpness. You knew this, you’ve even seen the humans fighting the game’s monsters but they seemed no different to you so you’d figured that it was just their minds that made them more dangerous and their family relationships. You are starting to reconsider. 

You pull back the throttle on your jetpack and fall into the space between Feferi and Kanaya. 

“You two were on the spaceship with the humans right? You saw them fight adult trolls, how did that go?” you ask as quietly as you can. 

“Badly for the adults.” Kanaya says stiffly. 

“They took down adult trolls with improvised weapons, Dave strangled one half to death with a shoelace!” Feferi hisses. 

“Ok, but that was in a crisis. But the rest of the time they seem so…” you trail off and look up at Mr Egbert. 

Now there’s the thing. Humans fight well in a crisis, and they’re pack animals. You had simply not considered until now how potentially low the bar for ‘crisis’ might be for some of them and you’re looking at a man with a subjugglator strife specibus and a known history of violence. 

You try to reassure yourself by pointing out that Rose isn’t afraid of him but then why would she be? Adult humans rarely attack juvenile humans and those who do, like her parents, are regarded with loathing. But there’s two problems with that, one: you are not a human child. And two: she’s in the same pack as him, she’s his daughter’s soulmate’s sister. And of course knowing humans you’re aware that all of them are the same pack now, bonded by blood and soulmarks. Maybe the mark on your arm puts you inside that venn diagram or maybe he won’t regard you as part of it, and there’s the rub. How much are you willing to bet that this human subjugglator has you in his list of people he won’t kill at the drop of a hat? Because ‘impressed Mindfang’ is more or less a straight cross over into the category of ‘could easily murder you’. 

“He’s never seemed dangerous to me but he uses jokerkind?” Terezi says dubiously. 

She wasn’t hatched on Alternia, she’s never seen a real subjugglator. Gamzee’s brand of gormless chill with occasional patches of rage have nothing on subjugglator fury. Trolls who doubt the dangerousness of highbloods like that or question subjugglators instead of hiding or doing  _ exactly _ what they say don’t live long. Fear of them is probably coded into you all by evolution now, enough so that the fear you, Kanaya and Feferi feel are broadcast to her strongly enough to make her jittery. 

“Let’s just get the beds and try not to make him mad.” you suggest quietly. 

Your phone pings with directions for each of the planets and you are left with little else to do but serve as Mr Egbert’s navigator. 

When you land on LOLCAT, you kind of hate Nepeta for that name even though she had no way of choosing it, Kanaya starts acting off. She’s staring at her phone and hiding behind you, putting you between her and Mr Egbert. You twist when you hear her crying. 

“What?” you hiss a demand. 

“I’ll- I’ll tell you later. It’s fine now.” she whispers, rubbing at her face. You’re not even going to bring her up on the unusual use of contractions. Mr Egbert passes close by and you let her hide behind you again. 

“Oh, kids. Always leaving their things lying about.” Mr Egbert tuts when he lands and picks up an abandoned set of Nepeta’s alchemised claws that she had left on the floor.

“Shouldn’t leave things lying around like that, someone could get hurt. Right, which way was it, Vriska?” he asks, turning to you. You immediately comply and supply him with directions.

He follows your guidance and then slices Nepeta’s quest bed free with his found weapon easy as pie. Meanwhile you’re scheming. 

You managed to take down Her Imperious Condescension but that was with the aid of the humans, none of you here have time powers and the only god tier player here is you. No way the four of you can take him out on your own, heiress strength or not. You could try to put him asleep with your psionics but it doesn’t work on absolutely everyone and trying and failing would be a disaster. 

Then of course there’s the matter that even if you manage to kill him for your own safety you have just unleashed a different problem. You will have killed one of the pack members of the humans. John and Jane will come for you, they will drag their soulmates and their family. Not to mention that killing his father will certainly sever the soulmate bond between you and John and if that’s anything like it is when a soulmate dies you won’t be in fighting shape for that. If you kill Mr Egbert the older StriLondes will register you as a threat to the younger ones and you know both of them are easily willing to kill to protect their kids. And, hey, if you piss off the twins then you’ve enraged the guy who can STOP TIME and the girl who can SEE THE FUTURE. 

Fuck, fuck, you are SO FUCKED. 

You can’t kill him. The only way this plays out well for you is total obedience. 

You land on Jake’s planet next, following Rose’s list and the direction of the planets. His quest bed is hidden inside some labyrinth and it’s laid out in such a way that you can’t just fly to the right coordinates, you have to solve puzzles. On the plus side you’re getting experience but on the other hand you’re making Mr. Egbert wait. 

You keep glancing at him at every time you chance you get, especially when Feferi starts making quiet little threatened growls that he certainly can’t hear because of how low they are. He’s watching her. The hair on the back of your neck stands up with the tension that you feel, it’s not broken when he finally speaks. 

“I’ve never been entirely clear on ancestry with trolls and from what Rosa told me we’re all somewhat of a special case because of this game.” Mr Egbert says, standing with his hands in his pockets as Terezi tries to solve a sliding puzzle on the wall. 

“Uh, how do you mean?” you ask. 

“Well, with humans it’s simple. Or it usually is. Two people come together and make a baby, the child is genetically half one parent and half the other. But from what I understand… well, Kanaya, your sister Porrim is a direct copy of Rosa, is she not?” he asks. 

“I- well, yes. She is as humans would put it, a clone. But as you mentioned that is something to do with the game I think, Sir.” Kanaya says calmly and compliantly. 

“But you’re not?” he asks, looking at her with his blue eyes. They’re unsettlingly John-like to you. 

“Well- that is complicated. Trolls as a species have existed for longer, our DNA is different and more complex than human DNA. We have more, what you would call, junk DNA. Information that is encoded but not used. My DNA as a whole is the same as my mother’s but where Porrim is a direct copy I am more…” Kanaya searches for a metaphor. 

“For example, Terezi has sharp teeth but Latula and Redglare both have unusual flat teeth. Damara’s hair is quite smooth whereas Aradia’s is very wild, it is the same information but reshuffled. Inactive parts of the DNA become active and some active ones become inactive. We have both ancestors and genetic diversity.” Kanaya continues. 

“That’s very interesting.” Mr Egbert nods. 

“Of course for humans genetics isn’t all there is to family, plenty of people adopt or form their own families in different ways.” He adds. 

You think of Dirk, of Jake and even of Roxy. None of them are the direct parent of the younger players related to them but in the absence of a parent or a competent parent all of them claimed their respective young. Honestly Jane and John are the only normal siblings around. You’re pretty sure you could leave an infant with any human and within a minute they’d have claimed it as theirs and be ready to skin anyone who tried to take it away. Fuckin’ humans. 

“My soulmate… my wife was adopted. Sort of.” Mr Egbert continues. 

“Oh?” you say, sensing that perhaps this requires some audience participation. 

“Kidnapped, brainwashed and tortured would be more accurate perhaps. But the woman considered my soulmate to be her child. That was your ancestor.” Mr Egbert says monotonously and looks at Feferi.

Oh. Her ancestor tortured his soulmate. Well, it was nice knowing Feferi. 

She stands frozen, ear fins pinned back to the side of her head as she stares up at the human subjugglator. 

“And,” he continues, “if you’re genetically the same as her albeit reshuffled slightly…”

You cringe and feel Terezi’s hand touch your arm and the warmth of Kanaya’s lower blood body as she steps closer to you. You’re all sure that Feferi is going to die. 

“That means you’re her child, which makes you my soulmate’s sister. You and Meenah both, of course. My wife isn’t… she’s not with us anymore. And I know that your ancestor is dead. It doesn’t seem right for you to be all alone and regardless of my feelings towards your ancestor you are technically family. I hope you wouldn’t find it presumptuous for me to consider you family, but no one should be alone.” Mr Egbert smiles at her. 

Wait. He’s not going to kill her? He’s adopting her? Humans! Good God. 

You exchange a look with Kanaya. She is Rose’s soulmate and the two are disgustingly in love so theoretically she’s in his pack/family too but it’s a more tenuous connection. You and Terezi on the other hand are his son’s soulmates so you should be safe. Only… well, Terezi has done nothing with her connection to him and you’ve not talked about that and you’ve not even talked to him about the fact that he is your soulmate so likely Mr Egbert doesn’t know. Oh, and to add the icing on this disaster you’ve not talked to Terezi about what sort of quadrant arrangement thing the two of you are going to work out with John and where it leaves you and her because you ALSO have pale inclinations towards her. This whole thing is a disaster and honestly being subjugglated would be simpler than all that. 

Potentially you’re all safe here, potentially only Feferi is. 

The wall behind you clicks open as Terezi solves the puzzle and Mr Egbert perks up and follows her through it in order to remove yet another quest bed. You follow Rose’s directions to the letter and you all roll through the remaining quest bed pickups as fast as you can and in varying levels of terror. 


End file.
